Why quotes about money? Let’s be honest, everybody is interested in money! For some people, money means freedom, success, life’s comforts, fulfilling dreams and passions, but for others, money is synonymous with power and injustice. It is a source of problems, or represents a superficial life. So while some people see money as a necessary condition for happiness, for other people, money can contribute to happiness, but it offers no guarantees. The more radical among us will be adamant that there is nothing good about money or wealth.
In short, money is a source of debate; it gets people worked up. It attracts, sickens, blinds, scares or adds value. It can make things ugly, easy or complicated. Whatever the case, we each seem to have a complex and very individual relationship to money, which can change throughout the course of life.
What about you? What is your position when it comes to money? What is your opinion about money? Do you think it is a good or a bad thing to have a lot of money?
In the days of the rat race, the subject of money has a place in questions of personal development, entrepreneurship, reflections on happiness and what it means to personal and professional success. In this article, I will invite you to read a selection of the best proverbs and quotes about money. Whether these money quotes speak to you or not, one thing is sure – they will not leave you indifferent.
Quotes about becoming rich
- “There is no secret to becoming rich. It just takes a few steps, discipline, and a little bit of work.”
Ramit Sethi and Mickaël Ferrari
- “I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.’”
Warren Buffett
- “Being rich is not about how much money you have. It is about a state of mind; the right words and the right plan.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “The richest people in the world build networks; everyone else is trained to look for work.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “Investing is the surest way to become rich.”
Ramit Sethi and Mickaël Ferrari
- “Becoming rich is less about intelligence than discipline.”
Ramit Sethi and Mickaël Ferrari
- “The starting point of all achievement is desire.”
Napoleon Hill
- “A handful of men have become very rich by paying attention to details that most others ignored.”
Henry Ford
- “The most important factor in becoming rich is taking the first step, not being a genius.”
Ramit Sethi and Mickaël Ferrari
- “Will the pure air be sweeter? Will sunny days be brighter? Will the stars twinkle more? Or will I lose all that? Do I really want to be rich?”
Don Rosa
- “There are two ways to be rich: have a lot of money or have few needs.”
Christophe André
- “Contemporary people want to be rich, but there is a choice to make because there are two types of wealth: wealth that can make them sink to the bottom of the sea and wealth that raises them up.”
Omraam Michaël Aïvanhov
Quotes about money from the richest men in the world
- “I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over ten million dollars when I was 24, and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25 and… it wasn’t that important — because I never did it for the money.”
Steve Jobs
- “If we were motivated by money, we would have sold the company a long time ago and ended up on a beach. If you’re changing the world, you’re working on important things.”
Larry Page
- “In simple terms, we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”
Mark Zuckerberg
- “A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.”
Warren Buffett
- “If you are born poor it’s not your mistake. But if you die poor it’s your mistake.”
Bill Gates
- “Making money doesn’t oblige people to forfeit their honour or their conscience.”
Guy de Rothschild
- “I believe when you have $1 million, that’s your money – when you have $20 million, you start to have a problem. When you have $1 billion, that’s not your money, that’s the trust society gave you.” When you have more than one billion dollars, or a hundred million dollars, that’s a responsibility you have – it’s the trust of people on you, because people believe you can spend money better than the others.
Jack Ma
- “After all, money disappears, friends die, and you die, but your reputation remains.”
Thor Bjorgolfsson
- “Hard-won things are more valuable than those that come too easily.”
Richard Branson
- “Money is just a consequence. I always say to my team: Don’t worry too much about profitability. If you do your job well, profitability will come.”
Bernard Arnault
- “I’m not the fourth smartest man in America. Wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.”
Larry Ellison
- “I never thought about becoming wealthy. It never crossed my mind. What really motivated me was to try to accomplish something.”
Sheldon Adelson
Short money quotes
- “All the splendour in the world is not worth a good friend.”
Voltaire
- “Money: cause of all evil.”
Gustave Flaubert
- “Money has never yet made anyone rich.”
Seneca
- “I worked for money and I wanted to be rich.”
John Lennon
- “Money is ether.”
Martinique proverb
- “Money often costs too much.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Morals change with money.”
Roland Topor
- “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”
English proverb
- “Money can’t buy me love.”
- “Wealth illuminates mediocrity.”
Abel Bonnard
- “Money raises a wall between men.”
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
- “We do not own wealth. Wealth owns us!”
Catel
- “Financial ease hides all kinds of imperfections.”
Aziz Baira
- “Money is a very poor counsellor.”
Jules Renard
- “Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”
Socrates
- “Make money a means and not an end.”
Pierre Rabhi
- “Successes produce success, as money produces money.”
Chamfort
- “When money appears, everything becomes acceptable.”
Alexander La Haye and Hélène Trudeau
- “You can’t put money in a closed fist.”
Serge Uzzan
- “The best foundation in the world is money.”
Miguel de Cervantès
- “Many people lack only money in order to be honest.”
Carlo Dossi
- “With money, nobody is every quite alone.”
Paulo Coelho
- “Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point.”
Bill Gates
- “Money should not cost more than you take from it.”
Jocelyne Felx
- “Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction but merit.”
George Bernard Shaw
- “The miser does not own his property, his property owns him.”
Bion de Boristhène
- “Habit gives a man authority, money gives him audacity.”
Chinese proverb
- “We’ve got to put a lot of money into changing behaviour.”
Bill Gates
Quotes about the quest for money
- “After a certain point, money is meaningless. It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts.”
Aristotle Onassis
- “Money is a master that we give ourselves. Anyone who breaks his back to get more than he needs is a madman.”
René Ouvrard
- “To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.”
Gilbert K. Chesterton
- If you are going to build the Empire State Building, the first thing you need to do is dig a deep hole and pour a strong foundation. If you are going to build a home in the suburbs, all you need to do is pour a 6-inch slab of concrete. Most people, in their drive to get rich, are trying to build an Empire State Building on a 6-inch slab.
Robert Kiyosaki
- “Wealth is like sea water: the more you drink, the thirstier you become.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
- “The truth is simply that money, power, and all the possessions for which men torment and ultimately shoot each other mean little to one who has come to himself, to a self-willed man.”
Hermann Hesse
- “As he had no desire of his own, he desired what others desired: money. Another life was hidden beneath this word, an indefinable, yet clearly happy elsewhere.”
Fabrice Humbert
- “So many people ruin their health getting rich, while others use their fortune to get their health back.”
A.J. Reb Materi
- “A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end.”
Albert Camus
Quotes about money and what we do with it
- “The only point of money is its use.”
- “…the possessor of wealth is not made happy by possessing it but by spending it, and not by spending it as he pleases but by knowing how to spend it well.”
Miguel de Cervantes
- “Wealth does not consist of the possession of treasures, but knowing how to use them.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
- “Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.”
Henry David Thoreau
- “Wealth is not the amount of money one has, but the way in which one uses it.”
Paulo Coelho
- “Money is of course necessary, but once you have enough to live on, it is preferable that it remain a very secondary consideration for you, otherwise you will be obliged to sacrifice everything that is best in you to it.”
Omraam Michaël Aïvanhov
- “It is a common weakness in men; thinking that with a little money, they will always get what they want.”
Dominique Barbéris
- “But that’s the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.”
Phil Knight
- “We think ourselves rich, because we have a lot of gold. It is only real wealth by the use we make of it.”
Guillaume-Charles-Antoine Pigault-Lebrun
- “We cannot live without money, but that is no reason to give it pride of place.”
Dalai Lama
- “Being rich is within your control, not some expert’s. How rich you are depends on the amount you’re able to save and on your investment plan.”
Ramit Sethi and Mickaël Ferrari
“Rich versus Poor” quotes
- “Poverty enriches, wealth impoverishes.”
Mazouz Hacène
- “Wealth attracts friends, poverty selects them.”
Tim Ringuette
- “The rich make money work for them. The poor work for money.”
- Harv Eker
- “There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.”
Oscar Wilde
- “Rich people create their life. Poor people believe that they are subjected to their life.”
- Harv Eker
- “Everyone hates the rich, but everyone wants to become rich. Everyone loves the poor, but nobody wants to become poor.”
Charles Sannat
- “A rich man is nothing more than a poor man with money.”
W.C. Fields
- “The sweat of the poor is always on the money of the rich.”
Eugène Cloutier
- “The philosophy of the rich and the poor is this: the rich invest their money and spend what is left. The poor spend their money and invest what is left.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “Poverty is a microscope that magnifies our defects, wealth is a prism that colours them.”
Alfred Auguste Pilavoine
- “The world is not divided between the good and the bad, but between the rich and the poor.”
Jean-Paul II
- “The richest of men is the generous one; the poorest is the miser.”
Chamfort
- “Rich people focus on the solutions, poor people focus on the problems.”
- Harv Eker
- “Don’t talk about riches to those that have none, talk about poverty to those who are rich.”
Anne Barratin
- “Neither today or ever will riches be enough to raise a man. But today, more than ever, poverty brings him down.”
Gilbert Sinoué
- “The poor and the middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them.”
Robert Kiyosaki
Quotes about money and happiness
- “They say that money cannot buy happiness. Perhaps, but it allows you to choose the kind of misery you prefer.”
Pierre-Jean Vaillard
- “Money doesn’t make those that have none happy.”
Boris Vian
- “Money is simply the counterfeit currency of happiness.”
Jules de Goncourt
- “If money doesn’t make you happy, give it back.”
Jules Renard
- “Most of our happiness or unhappiness depends on our vision of things and not on our financial capacity.”
Marcel Junior Kensa Kpoumie
- “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
Marcus Aurelius
- Money can buy a house, but not a home.
- Money can buy a bed, but not sleep.
- Money can buy a clock, but not time.
- Money can buy a book, but not knowledge.
- Money can buy food, but not an appetite.
- Money can buy you friends, but not love.
- Money can buy you medicine, but not health.
- Money can buy you many things, but not happiness.”
Anonymous
- “Money can’t buy happiness, but at least it pays for everything else.”
Carol Higgins Clark
- “If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me.”
Antoine de Saint Exupéry
- “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
Epictetus
Quotes about money and power
- “Money is money, in whichever hands it is found. It is the only power that we never dispute.”
Alexander
- “With fortune our virtues and our vices appear, as light makes objects appear.”
La Rochefoucauld
- “When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know that it is.”
Oscar Wilde
- “He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.”
Benjamin Franklin
- “Only he who has spirit ought to have possessions: otherwise possessions are a public danger.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Possession of wealth is everything, and justifies everything. A rich man, no matter what he does, whether he casts off an ageing wife, whether he abandons his mother without relief, whether he steals from those who trust him with their money, will always retain the consideration of his friends.”
Alexis Carrel
- “Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.”
Charles Caleb Colton
- “If money goes before, all ways do lie open.”
William Shakespeare
- “It is more difficult to bear wealth without becoming corrupt than poverty without becoming debased.”
Joseph Michel Antoine Servan
Quotes about money and financial education
- “Money is one form of power. But what is more powerful is financial education. Money comes and goes, but if you have the education about how money works, you gain power over it and can begin building wealth.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”
Warren Buffet
- “Compulsory education brings wages, personal education brings wealth.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “One of the reasons why the poor are poor is because poor people are not trained to recognise entrepreneurial opportunities. They spend too much time in school and what they learned at school was to work for wages, instead of working for themselves.”
Jack Ma
- “Intelligence solves problems and produces money. Money without financial intelligence is money soon gone.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “Profits are better than wages. Wages make you a living; profits make you a fortune.”
Napoleon Hill
- “I want parents to teach that academic intelligence is essential, but so is financial intelligence.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- The single most powerful asset we all have is our mind. If it is trained well, it can create enormous wealth in what seems to be an instant. An untrained mind can also create extreme poverty that can crush a family for generations.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “Skills make you rich, not theories.”
Robert Kiyosaki
Quotes about a lack of money
- “Money is not important, but a lack of money is.”
Jean-François Somain
- “The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
Mark Twain
- “When you lack money, it’s a problem. But when you have some, you mustn’t make it one.”
Maxime Le Forestier
- “Money is constant stress. We are afraid we don’t have enough, and when we have enough, we are afraid of losing it all.”
Mazouz Hacène
- “They say that three million people are looking for work. It’s not true – they would be satisfied with money.”
Coluche
- “Money without financial intelligence is money soon gone.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “If glory brings money, I will wait for glory; if glory does not bring money, I will wait for money.”
Jack London
- “Money has no smell, but poverty does.”
Paul Léautaud
- “I went to the seaside and sat down on the terrace of a pretty coffee shop / ice-cream parlour. I have always been in the habit of spending to take my mind off my financial troubles.”
Laurent Gounelle
- “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”
Woody Allen
- “Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.”
Groucho Marx
Quotes about the meaning of wealth
- “Being rich is not thinking about money.”
Claude Rich
- “Wealth is a thick mattress that can break a fall.”
Virginie Despentes
- “It is not abundance, but excellence that is wealth.”
Joseph Joubert
- “Smoking a costly cigar with your eyes closed – that is riches.”
Fernando Pessoa
- “True wealth is not money, but the bonds we weave. Money is a useful resource to encourage projects with the people you love.”
Marie-Dominique Lelièvre
- “The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more service for the betterment of life.”
Henry Ford
- “The wealth of a man is not what he possesses, but what he leaves behind him.”
Yasmina Khadra
- “True wealth is not to expect anything of others, true freedom is not to owe anything to anyone.”
Yasmina Khadra
- “Wealth is an aptitude, so is poverty”
Jean Cocteau
Quotes about money and the simplicity of life
- “My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but the fewness of my wants.”
Joseph Brotherton
- “How about, instead of making lots of money to live, we tried living with less money?”
Jules Renard
- “True disdain for money lies in the knowledge of all the wealth you can have without it.”
Abel Bonnard
- “It is very surprising that the wealth of the people of the Church began with the principle of poverty.”
Montesquieu
- “If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.”
Epicurius
- “True wealth is what remains when you have lost all your money.”
Anonymous
- “Some men are richer in their poverty than many others in their wealth.”
Alfred Auguste Pilavoine
- “You don’t immediately find your balance and the simplicity of life among all the complications of wealth. Stubbornness is required.”
Blaise Cendrars
- “Their sudden poverty opened their eyes; wealth had kept them closed.”
Boccace
Quotes about money and financial success
- “The starting point of all achievement is desire.”
Napoleon Hill
- “The reason I’ve been able to be so financially successful is my focus has never, ever for one minute, been money.”
Oprah Winfrey
- “Work for the fun of it, and the money will arrive some day.”
Ronnie Milsap
- “Making money is a valid objective, and it corresponds to one of the phases of existence. You must just avoid getting bogged down in it, and know how to move towards something else to succeed in life.”
Laurent Gounelle
- “Money is less important than the way it which it is made.”
Hervé Desbois
- “Make money and the entire world will agree to call you sir.”
Mark Twain
- “No, he’s a poor man! He had everything, and our love. Now all he has left is his money and what his money can buy.”
Don Rosa
- “The problem with having a job is that it gets in the way of getting rich.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”
Henry Ford
Quotes about independence and financial freedom
- “Money is coined liberty.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- “If you want to be financially-free, you need to become a different person than you are today and let go of whatever has held you back in the past.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “Financial freedom is available to those who learn about it and work for it.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “You will never know true freedom until you achieve financial freedom.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars, there’s a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that. But once you get much beyond that, I have to tell you, it’s the same hamburger.”
Bill Gates
- “Financial freedom is a mental, emotional and educational process.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “The money we possess is that of freedom; the money we pursue is that of servitude.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “The only effective guarantee of freedom has always been and still is financial independence.”
Jean-Claude Clari
- “Oh ! Money that I so despised, and yet you have your merit: source of freedom, you arrange a thousand things in life when everything without you is difficult… When one has no money, one depends on everything and everyone.”
François René de Chateaubriand
- “The best way to lose your independence it to spend money that you do not possess.”
Mustapha Kémal
- “Do not value money for any more nor any less than it is worth: it is a good servant and a bad master.”
Alexandre Dumas
Quotes about money and luxury
- “I’m not interested in luxury, I’m interested in money.”
Monica Bellucci
- “Rich people buy luxuries last, while the poor and middle class tend to buy luxuries first. Why? Emotional discipline.”
Robert Kiyosaki
- “Poverty helps a man to be relieved of everything that weighs his heart down and makes his step heavy. In wealth, we always seek to have more. Always more things, always more money. And in this race to luxury, to pleasure, we get nowhere.”
Sœur Emmanuelle
- “Luxury is about money, elegance is a question of education.”
Sacha Guitry
- “Money has no odour, but over a million, you can start to smell it.”
Tristan Bernard
Quotes about the bad aspects of money
- “When it stops being a means to become a goal, money corrupts all human behaviour and becomes despicable.”
Romain Guilleaumes
- “Money opens the doors of vice and closes the doors of virtue.”
Mazouz Hacène
- “With all the money in the world, a man is not made, he is degraded.”
Abbé Pierre
- “Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave.”
Leon Tolstoy
- “If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.”
Swami Vivekananda
- “Prosperity brings with it a drunkenness which baser men can never resist.”
Balzac
- “The bad press that money gets manages to spoil the pleasure of owning some.”
Philippe Bouvard
- “There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.”
Andrew Carnegie
- “What use is money if we have to die? It is very rare that money can save someone from death.”
Paulo Coelho
- “There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.”
Andrew Carnegie
- “The only problems that money can solve are money problems.”
Kin Hubbard
- “All we think about is money. The man who has money thinks about his own, the man who does not have money thinks about that of others.”
Sacha Guitry
- “One can buy anything with money except morality.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Quotes about money and time
- “Money cannot buy back youth.”
Chinese proverb
- “Time is a waste of money.”
Oscar Wilde
- “Time is money.”
Benjamin Franklin
- “Time takes your money, but money can’t buy your time.”
James Taylor
- “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you can’t get more time.”
Jim Rohn
- “They say that time is money, but money doesn’t matter as long as you have time.”
Nazim Yaya
- “The only difference between a rich person and poor person is how they use their time.”
Robert Kiyosaki
There are many other themes for quotes about money: the value of money, donating money, capitalism…
Over to you now to make your suggestions and share other money quotes in the comments!
Research used to find this article:
Financial freedom quotes, financial independence quotes
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